As is so often the way in the modern world, it began with a phone message. The current spell of freezing weather has been tough for birds, with some species fleeing the worst of the snow in southeast England by moving west. All standing water has now been frozen for over a week, forcing wading birds to seek out flowing water to find unfrozen mud. Such conditions can force some birds into the city waterways too. I was out early on Saturday and Sunday mornings and by Monday morning had added the third Mute Swan and the first Golden Plovers for the Lye Valley area, as they flew overhead:
I was at work on Tuesday, when Tony Gillie messaged me, with some staggering news:
It was not just that this would be a remarkable species to see within Oxford city, but also that the photo was taken on a phone. The bird must have been standing next to the observer! I contacted Isaac West and we agreed to go and see if we could find the Jack Snipe at first light the following morning, Wednesday. Suddenly Sunday felt a very long time ago.
We arrived at the top pond at the head of the valley, in bitterly cold temperatures. Immediately we could see a number of Common Snipe rising from the small pools at the top of the valley, circling around and descending again. With these birds being so mobile, it was hard to put a number on them. A conservative count was four, but there could easily have been twice this number present. For context, there is only one other Lye Valley record of Common Snipe, a single bird from January of this year.
Common Snipe in vegetation in the Lye Valley pondsCommon Snipe in the culvert at the very top of the valleyIsaac checks the top pond. It really is this small.
We took a few steps closer, another snipe rose, I raised my binoculars, saw the short bill and the long dark crescent under the eye and I called “that’s it!” as the bird landed a short way down the valley. As we got onto the boardwalk some snipe flew back towards the ponds, so we returned to the top pond. We scanned the pond edges and Isaac called “I think I’ve got it!” There, amongst the frozen vegetation was a tiny, but magnificent, Jack Snipe:
The upperparts were very dark brown, making the long strong scapular stripes glow golden-yellow in the pre-dawn light. A passing Wren gives some impression of how small these birds are:
As the rising sun began to touch the top of the bird’s head, we noticed that there was frost on the wingtips and tail of this bird, literal Jack frost:
I put the news out to the local group and we were joined by a few other people, including Pete Roby:
The first ever Lye Valley twitch. Crowd control was not necessary.
Jason turned up, was greeted by sunshine and managed to get some superb video, as the Jack Snipe de-frosted and began to feed:
Even better, this Jack Snipe was the 100th species that I have recorded in the Lye Valley area and I could not have hoped for a better species for this landmark. It also takes the site list to 103 species, the illustrated checklist of all these species can be seen here. The Lye Valley bird list now contains seven species of wader, remarkable for an area with no significant open water. The cold spell is forecast to end today, Saturday, and a visit this morning produced more waders. Not one, but two Woodcocks:
This two-week period of freezing weather may have been tough for the birds, but has produced some incredible local patch birding.
Warneford Meadow, a warm, grey mid-November morning. One minute I’m wondering about the earliest singing Song Thrush I’ve heard by about four weeks. The next, I glance up, and there pure white against the evenly grey sky, is a flying swan:
Or as I put it at the time: “OMG, there’s a f******g swan!”
Mute Swan is a rare bird up here, where we have no open water. I’ve recorded more than twice as many Tree Pipits (5), as I have Mute Swans (2), in the last four years.
In these situations, I reach straight for my camera. The detail on flying birds it can pick up will be much greater than I will see, even with binoculars. I fired off a dozen or so pictures, then moved back to binoculars to watch the swan continue north-east, over the Churchill Hospital and away over Headington and out of sight. Was it the way the head and bill profile appeared long and smooth in the camera viewfinder that made a voice in my head say “that could be a Whooper?” Or maybe it was just the time of year? Either way, as I reached down to check the pictures on the back of my camera, I knew the identity of this bird was about to be resolved. I looked at my first picture of the bird and zoomed straight in on the head. It was a Whooper Swan!
It had the head profile of a ski-ramp, long and smooth, blending seamlessly into the forehead. Some yellow was just about visible on the bill. To me, the underside of the bill and the head appear pretty flat and in line with the underside of the neck in flying Mute Swans. Whereas in Whooper Swans the head bulges lower down, beneath the line of the neck in flight. This was very apparent in the field and in the pictures, above and below.
A Whooper Swan, over Headington – a record so unexpected, that it was not even on my fantasy list of potential new bird species! This is up there with the other great Lye Valley flyover records, Bar-tailed Godwit (April 2020) and Great White Egret (March 2022). These moments make local patch birding so rewarding. What next?!
The eBird list from today is here, a Woodcock flushed from Churchill Meadow was also notable.
A half-term family break to a friend’s house at Fife Ness. We drove up on Thursday 20th October, a filthy day. A deep low was situated just off the coast of Northumberland, pulling in strong winds from right across the North Sea onto the Fife coastline. Visibility was poor, the coast was battered by strong winds and rain. All the way up I was wide-eyed in anticipation. Twisting, invisible corridors of air began to connect Fife with birds migrating across northern Europe. Some of these birds may have come from Scandinavia. Some from much further afield. But all of these birds were suddenly pulled across the North Sea and in terrible conditions, sought the first land and cover they could find.
We arrived at Fife Ness on Thursday evening, I spent the last 30 minutes of light at The Patch, a small area of trees on the tip of the peninsular. Late October, rain on my face, an easterly wind in the sycamores. It does not get better. A Yellow-browed Warbler calls. The atmosphere crackles with anticipation.
The tiny wood is stuffed full of Goldcrests. Their constant high-pitched calls provide the backdrop. The sound of the easterly wind in the sycamores, the constant call of Goldcrests and behind them all, the distinctive dry rattle of a calling Red-breasted Flycatcher:
Red-breasted Flycatcher
Robins were everywhere, thrushes streamed overhead, Redwing calls a constant aerial soundtrack.
My most wanted was a self-found Pallas’s Warbler. The sycamores held Blackcaps (above), Chiffchaffs and a Lesser Whitethroat that was eventually ringed and proved to be a Siberian bird, blythi. Brambling and Redpolls passed overhead all day, Woodcocks zipped around. It was superb. Later in the afternoon I caught up with a dark shape at nearby Upper Kilminning, flitting away from the Robins, a Red-flanked Bluetail, always keeping under cover, always hiding the blue in the tail:
Birds were being found all around the peninsular. A Barred Warbler at Lower Kilminning, Yellow-browed Warblers at a number of sites. The nearby Isle of May produced a spectacular haul of 2 Bluetails, Pallas’s Warbler, Radde’s Warbler and tens of Long and Short-eared Owls. Over the next day, the easterlies faded, leaving behind them some extraordinary birds. The best, this Amur Stonechatstejnegeri which breeds no nearer than Mongolia.
The unstreaked orange rump, the dark brown mantle, contrasting with pale underparts and the pure white throat were all features I saw on the stejnegers at Westing on Unst in October 2019, but no doubt DNA analysis will have the last say on this bird’s identity.
Bird migration calmed down from intense high of the first few days. But even on calm days migration was apparent, these Pink-footed Geese from the Arctic, heading down the coast, over the forest:
I also visited the Hilton of all seawatching hides, the Fife Bird Club hide at the tip of Fife Ness. Having joined the club to gain access to the hide I was not disappointed: comfy office chairs on wheels (with back cushions too!); padded benches; a working and correct clock; lots of information boards, it was impressive! The sea watching was gentle, I did some simply because I live a long way from the sea. Gannets and Razorbills streamed past, Common Scoters flew past in small flocks, with a few Velvet Scoter and Long-tailed Duck past now and then too. Good numbers of Red-throated Divers were frequent, with singles of Manx Shearwater and Puffin being the highlights, alongside a small pod of Bottle-nosed Dolphins.
Velvet ScoterBottle-nosed Dolphins
The rest of the week saw some other nice moments. A beech tree reaching down to a small stream, its leaves cradling a rock surrounded by water. On the rock, under an umbrella of leaves, a Dipper, singing away above the sound of the stream:
We visited Tentsmuir Forest, Red Squirrels were hard to come by this year, but we glimpsed a few:
Dune Waxcap
The self-found Pallas’s Warbler may have to wait for another autumn. But the combination of those easterly winds, the sycamores on the coast, migrant birds everywhere with anticipation levels peaking, made for an amazing, intense and very special east coast migration experience.
Partial solar eclipse, peaking through the clouds.
The shift in our birding fortunes began, very subtly and almost unnoticed, on Saturday afternoon. We were at Valyie, where Andy was mourning the departure of three juvenile Common Rosefinch, one of his favourite birds. I guess it takes all sorts. And we had seen all three birds on more than one occasion already.
Juvenile Common Rosefinch, “in all its glory” – photo by Andy.
At about 4pm, Andy called me to say that he had just had a glimpse of the head of an unstreaked acro in the dense bushes behind the house. I joined him and we spent half an hour or so searching for it, but hardly saw a bird. Then news broke that the Ortolan was back on the beach road, so we walked down to try to see it and made a mental note to return to Valyie. The next afternoon we were back. Dusk was falling. I was walking slowly down the gully next to the house, when I flushed what appeared to be a pale, almost sandy-coloured, warbler. It flew further down the gully, and appeared very evenly coloured, with no warm rump tones. I called Andy, who joined me and after a few minutes, the bird flew from the gully, into the crop field across the road. We had one more flight view that evening, in near darkness, but could not add any detail to what we had already seen in two brief flight views.
We were back at 8am the following morning, Monday 3rd October. We were joined by local birder and Unst resident Dave Cooper and a friend. After half an hour or so of searching, Andy located the warbler in the crop. It was extremely elusive, only flicking up occasionally and never perching out. It was also very mobile, appearing in one area and then popping up at the other end of the field for a second, before disappearing. Early on, Andy had a very brief glimpse of the whole bird which suggested Booted Warbler. Later in the morning, we had another flight view, which revealed the short-winged appearance, slightly jinking flight action and no definitely no white in the tail. So we now knew it was not a Booted Warbler and our thoughts moved towards Blyth’s Reed Warbler. As the weather deteriorated, with rain showers sweeping through, the bird appeared less pale, more a light rufous brown. Feeding in soaking vegetation was also making the bird wet, which added to the darker colouration we saw as the day wore on. After five hours, this was my best picture of the warbler:
Not much to go on!
But we did not let it go. You can feel it when the Birding Gods are testing you. We tried to remain alert and observant, even when the bird disappeared, even when it rained. Fortunately, a few more people joined us as we tried to confirm the identification. Roger Wyatt, from Oxfordshire, and another birder called Scott, had brought thermal imagers. These proved invaluable in helping locate the bird in the crop by narrowing the search zone, which made getting photographs slightly easier, though the bird remained extremely elusive and mobile.
Far right: Andy, next to Roger Wyatt using a thermal imager to locate the Blyth’s Reed Warbler in the back of the crop field
From pictures taken by Roger and Dave, the consensus was that we had found a Blyth’s Reed Warbler. The undertail coverts and flanks appeared clean white, with none of the buff tones of the undertail of Reed Warbler or the flanks of Marsh Warbler. It was noticeably short-winged, even in flight and some images showed a supercilium that bulged in front of the eye but did continue to extend back behind the eye. Dave Cooper has posted some of his pictures here and was happy with the identification, having found his first Blyth’s Reed in the very same field. On that occasion, it took him seven hours to identify it, in similar circumstances. It took us about eight hours in total. Being only an hour behind Dave Cooper, made us feel pretty good!
Back of camera shot from Roger WyattBack of camera shot from Dave Cooper. Note the short primaries, white undertail coverts and bulging fore-supercilium
On Saturday what was presumably the same bird appeared in Dave Cooper’s garden, which is only a twenty-second flight from the Valyie crop field and is visible from it. Here all the requisite features can be seen: clean white undertail coverts and flanks; short primary projection; an obvious fore-supercilium (not the open-faced appearance of Reed with an obvious eye-ring) and a dark “smudge” on the tip of the lower mandible. We did not hear this bird call.
Blyth’s Reed Warbler – photo by Dave CooperWing detail – photo by Dave Cooper, my text. Blyth’s Reed has deep emargination on p3 and p4, Reed and Marsh only on p3.
So having taken eight hours over three days to unravel our first rare find on Shetland, it took us about two seconds to wrap up our second. We left Unst on Tuesday morning and began our drive down through Mainland to catch the evening ferry from Lerwick. We had time to pop in to admire some other birds en route, so headed to Hillswick to see the reported Pechora Pipit. As we headed out to the west side of Mainland, Andy spotted two glowing white shapes perched in the lee of a bush, sheltering from the driving rain and westerly gale. They were very obviously, and immediately, identified as Hornemann’s Arctic Redpolls. It was not a difficult call. The only difficulty was looking at them directly, as the nearly pure white rump and flanks were burningly bright, threatening our retinas:
“Look at the white on that!” Hornemann’s Arctic Snowball. Going FULL SNOWBALL!
It had been a good twenty-four hours. For the first time, we felt calm and rewarded for our efforts. It was a bit odd to meet other birders at Hillswick, having met so few people on Unst, but we tried to be sociable. We had reasonable flight views of the Pechora Pipit and both got binocular views of the black and white mantle braces. If you squint very hard you can make out the dark wing panel, bordered by white wingbars above and below, on the montage picture below:
Like monks, Pechora Pipits are known for their silence on rising. We heard the flight call twice, a hard, almost electronic “dzitt!“, that was very distinctive. Also like monks, we nodded in silent appreciation:
The possible homeyeri Great Grey Shrike – picture by Roger Wyatt
Half an hour later we were watching the Great Grey Shrike in the village that some are speculating may be of the eastern race homeyeri (pictured above), when the Birding Gods finally delivered their special reward. It was whispered there was a Lanceolated Warbler at Wester Quarff, some 45 minutes south of us, but close to Lerwick and our evening ferry. Presumably whispered, because we could not quite believe this was true. What were the chances that two major Shetland specialities would both be on Mainland and pretty much on our route to our ferry on the only day we were travelling south? We gave thanks to The Gods and left immediately. Our suffering was being rewarded.
Seeing the Lanceolated Warbler was not easy. It had attracted a crowd, perhaps 120 people when we arrived, including the friendly faces of Ewan Urquhart and Jim Hutchins from Oxfordshire. The bird was feeding in a field next to the road, where there were cows and calves. The grass was quite long and viewing was difficult. I got lucky and happened to have a clear view when the Lanceolated Warbler crept out from behind this tussock. However, most people were unsighted and could not see it. This tiny warbler had the behaviour and colour of a mouse, weaving its way through the grass stems:
Hugh Harrop then took control of the situation, asked the farmer the move the cows away from that corner of the field and arranged for three people to walk slowly through the field so the bird could be walked across the road to the opposite field, where the vegetation was shorter and the light better. This worked well, the Lanceolated Warbler fluttering across the road, passing between Ewan Urquhart’s legs at one point. Once across the road, it continued weaving its way through the grass, occasionally coming out into the open, where I had the sort of views of Lanceolated Warbler that I had only dreamt about. It was a fabulous bird:
We felt elated and relieved. Finally, we had seen some of the Shetland specialities that we have long dreamed about seeing. Two Arctic Redpoll, a Pechora Pipit and a Lanceolated Warbler: it had been a good day by anyone’s standards. But of course, the Birding Gods are fickle beasts. They delivered a Myrtle Warbler to Mainland the next day. Having driven north away from Oxfordshire and an American nightjar, we now found ourselves driving south, away from Shetland and an American warbler. We could sense the Birding Gods smiling. But we did not mind, as so were we.
The eBird trip report for all the birds we saw, photographed and sound recorded is here.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be birds,” and there were birds. But only the few would see them. And to do this, they had to pay the price.
The Birding Gods are fickle beasts. They give with one hand and take with the other. Having been deprived of a trip to worship the birds of Uganda with Dave Lowe and Ian Reid by a serious bike accident in June, I reasoned I had suffered enough. The Gods thought otherwise. I spent the summer recovering, walking, then cycling again. A planned trip to spend a week on Unst with Andy Last had looked in jeopardy, but I worked hard on my recovery and by late September, felt physically capable enough to commit to travel. This year, we would not base ourselves on Mainland Shetland, but rather headed north, to spend the week on Unst, home of the most northerly house, post office and lighthouse in the UK. We would be closer to the Gods. We would concentrate on finding our own birds. The Birding Gods would be pleased.
We left Oxford at 6am on Monday 26th September. A day I’ll always remember. Cause that was the day my belief in the benevolence of the Birding Gods died. By lunchtime, we were just south of Glasgow. We pulled into a service station. I glimpsed a thumbnail of a picture message from Jason arrive on my phone. I said to Andy “I think there’s a Nightjar in Oxfordshire“. Then, immediately, this:
The shock that rippled through the Oxfordshire birding community also rippled through us, in Scotland. But, unlike the other seventy people on that group whose lives at that very point in time had been thrown into chaos and who were desperately planning how they could escape work, family, or indeed any other sort of commitment at all, we were very calm. We were calm because we immediately knew we would not see this bird. It was six hours back to Oxford and we had a ferry to catch to Shetland that evening from Aberdeen. There was no decision to make. HAD I NOT SUFFERED ENOUGH? Obviously not, it was quite simply the best bird ever to turn up in Oxfordshire. A North American nightjar: better than the Oriole. Better than the Scops Owl. Better than the Surf Scoter. Much better than the Buff-bellied Pipit. It did not take long for our calm to turn into pain. We drove on. We suffered. We were well past Stirling before we spoke again. Andy turned to me and said, “Is it still there?” I checked and nodded, “Showing beautifully in the sunshine“. We birded the Girdleness peninsular, next to the Aberdeen ferry terminal, and found a Little Gull. At precisely the moment the Nighthawk took off from its fence in Wantage to continue its migration, our ferry pulled away from the docks in Aberdeen, into the teeth of a fierce north-westerly gale. It was going to be a rough night. Clearly, I had not suffered enough.
The next morning, our arrival in Lerwick was delayed by a couple of hours by the headwinds, so we had the chance to look for seabirds from the ship as dawn broke. In amongst the Fulmars, Gannets and occasional Bonxie, we found 5 Sooty Shearwaters shearing their way south through the North Sea. We docked in Lerwick, caught up with the Glaucous Gull in the harbour and the drake Surf Scoter at nearby Gulberwick, before we headed north to our home for the week, the most northerly island of Unst.
Glaucous Gull, Lerwick Harbour
We were based for the week in Uyeasound, right by the harbour and right by the Otters. We checked the local area every morning for migrants, before birding north through the island.
Uyeasound, on the south coast of Unst
Shetland in autumn is the land of Yellow-browed Warbler. They were out in force again this year, after a quiet year last year:
Some birds were quite vocal and we heard calling birds most days:
Most places had Common Redpolls too, calling fly-over birds were frequent:
But one of the highlights of this autumn was the influx of the big beasts from the north, Hornemann’s Arctic Redpolls. The birding machine that is Geoff Wyatt, found one just outside Uyeasound one afternoon when Andy and I were up in the north of the island, which we caught up with later in the week. We slipped off the island once, just to Mid Yell about 30 minutes away, to marvel at this fabulous white beast, before vowing that we must find our own:
At the ferry port this Minke Whale surfaced close by, the sound of its blow ringing around the bay, drawing attention:
Common migrants were a little thin on the ground, but sites with cover usually held something. We found Redstarts, Lesser Whitethroats and a Garden Warbler in various places, plus…
Spotted Flycatcher
Brambling
Meadow Pipit
Snow Bunting
Fulmar
Whooper Swans
Occasionally we popped in to pay homage to a local scarcity:
BluethroatBarred Warbler – photo by AndyRed-backed Shrike – photo by AndyOrtolan
We enjoyed an hour at Burrafirth, pictured above, one afternoon, with fog and clouds rolling in from Hermaness. We both thought we heard a Yellow-browed Warbler call from the bracken on the hillside. A quick clamber up revealed there was one, and a Willow Warbler and in the valley a Whinchat. Hermaness had no migrants, but still had good numbers of Great Skuas, we had 12 together at one point.
Andy at HermanessMe
But we sensed something had to change. We were finding birds, but just not the right ones. Andy’s camera stopped working after four days. I took this as a good sign. Is there a better way to get a close, beautifully lit view of a good bird, than not to have a working camera at hand? We couldn’t think of one. Another day passed. We considered whether we should take this strategy a step further and submerge all our optics in the Pool of Sacred Tears (aka the small garden pool by the road out of Uyesound):
This thought process paid immediate dividends, with Andy getting a glimpse of a small dark crake running between the willow bushes in the background. It was nearly dark before it ran back, confirming its identity as a Water Rail. We flushed this bird from near this area as we walked back along the road the following morning too.
We went back to the Gods for advice. Andy re-created the moment that the mighty sea-birder Erik the Red scored the first Fea’s Petrel for the North Sea in AD65, from this longship near Haroldswick. But the Gods were not amused. I slipped on the deck of this boat and twisted my injured leg. Had we suffered enough? Had we paid the price? Would we get our reward? Find out next time in “Shetland 22: the end”.
This morning’s visit to the parched Southfield Golf Course/Lye Valley area produced a couple of classic late-August migrants.
First up was a vocal Yellow Wagtail. Yellow Wagtails are recorded annually as fly-over migrants, but I am not aware of one ever being seen on the ground here. That all changed this morning when one flew over calling and as I watched, it dropped out of the sky to land on the golf course and begin interacting with 2 Pied Wagtails:
This bird called frequently. I recorded the flight calls using video on my phone and then downloaded them:
As I was watching the Yellow Wagtail on the ground, a loud, buzzing “tzeep” call from low overhead told me that my day had just gotten significantly better: the second Tree Pipit of the autumn was passing over. I just managed to capture a single flight call, as it headed south:
The regular appearance of Tree Pipits around Southfield Golf Course in Oxford city in late August and early September is still a puzzle. Historically, Tree Pipit is a scarce migrant and occasional rare breeding bird in Oxfordshire, although Tree Pipits were recorded regularly on this urban hilltop golf course as long ago as thirty years ago (per Steve Heath). I failed to see or hear any in 2019, but Tree Pipits have been recorded in each of the three years since, with all records between August 24th and September 8th.
Not all of these records are fly-over migrants. Last year I found a silent, feeding bird in the small meadow behind the Churchill Hospital (see photo below) and in 2020 one was heard calling at dawn from hawthorn scrub on the golf course. Dave Lowe has suggested that migrant Tree Pipits may roost in scrub and trees on the golf course and are being picked up at first light as they leave to continue their migration. Whatever the attraction of Southfield Golf Course to Tree Pipits, their annual appearance is one of the highlights of the early autumn migration period. Tzeep!
Let’s start with the good news: I am going to survive this. The bad news is that I had a terrible bike accident two weeks ago. I crashed on a high-speed descent and sustained serious soft tissue injuries that required 9 days in hospital and two rounds of surgery, including a skin graft on my right thigh. I am eternally grateful to my cycling companions (Michelle, Andy Last and Ben Sheldon) for administering first aid in pretty traumatic circumstances whilst we waited for the ambulance to arrive.
Once the surgeons at the John Radcliffe in Oxford had finished their work, there was a five-day wait to ensure that my skin graft had taken. The vacuum dressings could not be removed during this period, so this was a straight five-day wait in a hospital bed.
As I was unable to move or get up, I was fortunate to have a bed next to a window. The days blurred into each other, I spent hours alternating between watching clouds and trying to nap to fight the crushing sleep deprivation of being in hospital, when you are woken every two hours to have your vital signs assessed.
But if you can see the sky, then you can see birds. A routine began to emerge. I began keeping a daily e-bird list of the species that I could identify from my hospital bed. The hospital has a large Feral Pigeon population, these and the local Woodpigeons were the commonest species, along with Red Kites and Crows. Twice a Grey Heron flew slowly overhead, and once a Little Egret passed right over my side of the building, black legs and yellow feet, trailing behind it. It gave me pleasure. I smiled.
I was allowed to keep my window open, so sometimes could hear bird calls. Dawn is very early in June, but not as early as the nurses and their medication rounds. I heard Blackbirds singing, Wrens calling and Swifts screaming. One morning, at about 4:30am, I heard a singing Chiffchaff in the dawn. I was transported back to happier times, hearing this species announcing that spring was here. These connections with the outside world, and between my past and my present were incredibly therapeutic. When you are trapped in a hospital bed, anything that takes you to another place or time is very precious.
The staff and surgeons in the hospital were fantastic and I am expected to make a full recovery, though my leg may never quite look the same. To every person who visited me in hospital – thank you, it means more to me than you will ever know.
So, here I sit, in my garden on a hot summer’s evening, with Dave Lowe. My leg is in a brace, I’m forbidden from bending it for two weeks, but can walk with crutches. Above us, some form of aerial insect hatching event is taking place, There are several hundred gulls circling above Headington, flycatching. Swifts join them, as does the occasional opportunistic Red Kite. I scan through the gulls, beautifully lit against a blue sky. As always, most are Lesser Black-backs, with a few Herring and Black-headed Gulls in with them. Then I find myself checking for Mediterranean Gull, dreaming of Yellow-legged Gull. I smile. It’s going to be OK.
For a district that is 67 miles from the nearest sea, it seems strange that Headington is associated with sharks. But Bill Heine’s fabulous fiberglass shark, which protrudes 25 feet above the roof of the house he owned in New High Street, is probably the most famous thing about Headington. It also looks pretty good at night too, here pictured with Comet Neowise in the summer of 2020:
I had my own Great White experience in Headington yesterday morning. It was a routine Saturday morning dawn visit to Warneford Meadow and the Lye Valley. Perhaps early spring, if I really squinted hard enough, but really it was late winter. March 5th is slightly too early for the mass of waterbird migration that should kick off from mid-month and will probably pass overhead elsewhere, but as with all local patch birding, you just never know. So I keep going, just in case. A singing Nuthatch and drumming Great Spotted Woodpecker were positive signs many bird species were entering their breeding cycles. Displaying Greenfinches were obvious too, and Chaffinches had recently started singing.
I watch the skies constantly, as nervous as Vitalstatistix, who lived in fear of them falling on his head. My anxiety was not over the impending collapse of the atmosphere, but of missing a migrating bird flying over. Or worse: of only seeing it when it was already too distant to identify. The vast majority of my scans of the sky reveal either nothing or just Woodpigeons. But if you do something enough, eventually something will happen. Or at least, that is what I tell myself.
At 7:23am, I notice a shape in the sky. High above the Churchill Hospital, flying away and slightly east, it has deeply bowed wings and is quite large. I furrow my brow and raise my binoculars, whilst the words “Grey Heron?” begin to form in my mind. The data from my eyes immediately answer this question in the negative – the bird is pure white, above and below. “F**k, it’s an egret” I mutter, whilst quickly swinging my camera around to capture some pictures. Whilst the motor part of my brain works away on the logistics of getting some pictures of a distant white bird flying away from me against a white sky, the inquisitive part of my brain is still wrestling with the identity of this bird, from what I can see through the viewfinder, whilst I take pictures. “Looks big, very deep wingbeats – got to be a Great White?!” I ask myself, without really taking on the meaning of this.
By now, the bird is distant. My camera is not going to help me much more. I put the camera back on my shoulder and go back to a binocular view. The bird is struggling a bit with the stronger gusts of wind and drops down slightly in front of Shotover Hill, before rising again and continuing its journey east. A local Red Kite provides a nice point of comparison as they pass near each other, both birds appearing a similar size in flight.
Finally, I can hardly see the egret anymore, so I turn and review the pictures on the back of my camera. It IS a Great White Egret! The long, dark legs, trailing behind the body are just visible, as are the deeply bowed wing on downbeats:
You can just about make out the yellow bill here and check out the length of those wings:
Wow, what a start to spring 2022, or what an end to winter 2021-22! Either way, this is an amazing record of Great White Egret over Headington, Oxford, and a great incentive to continue dedicated coverage with spring migration just around the corner. What else might fly over before the sky falls on my head?
On one hand, it was expected. But on the other, completely unexpected. Pallas’s Warblers are very rare inland. But, very occasionally, a Pallas’s Warbler will spend the winter in the UK. I can recall a bird in the south-west that stayed and even began singing in early spring. One even wintered as close as Berkshire in 2013, but this was an exceptional record. Realistically, Pallas’s Warblers are rare birds of the east coast in late autumn. They are a great find anywhere being tiny, beautiful birds and all birders love them. There has never been a Pallas’s Warbler in Oxfordshire, and quite feasibly, there may never be one. Until Gareth Blockley found one yesterday afternoon.
At 15:48 the county rang to the sound of expletives as Gareth broke the news of his astonishing find:
We can forgive Gareth for his mis-spelling of the bird’s name. The magnitude of the find and the myth of the Pallas’s Warbler is such, that lesser men than Gareth would have been rendered unconscious at that moment. Gareth found and identified the bird and got the news out, with diagnostic pictures. These are the acts of legend in Oxfordshire birding.
Unfortunately, within 40 minutes of the bird being found, it was dark. Only two other people saw the first Oxfordshire Pallas’s Warbler that day. There then followed a contender for the most tense evening ever in Oxfordshire birding history. Would the bird stay? Would anyone else see it? Would it survive a night several degrees below zero, indeed the coldest night of the entire winter?
Well before sunrise, in bitterly cold conditions, local birders began gathering in the line of trees where the bird was last seen. By sunrise nearly 40 people were present and we pretty much all knew each other.
Bird activity began. It went something like this: Blue Tit. Chiffchaff. Long-tailed Tit. Chiffchaff. Chiffchaff. There were a lot of Chiffchaffs. Blue Tit. Chiffchaff. Chiffchaff. And so it goes. A freezing hour passed. Another freezing hour passed. The procession of Chiffchaffs continued.
Then, finally, a shout from Pete Roby. Running. Looking. More running. And in the back of an alder tree, a yellow and gold gem zips about manically: the Pallas’s Warbler. The bird is very mobile. In binoculars I get a flash of the rump as it powers up into the crown of the tree, followed by views of the head pattern as it pauses, before darting across the track to feed high in alders further along the path.
Photographs are pretty much impossible, though I do try. It is dark, the bird tiny, hyperactive and silhouetted.
Pallas’s Warblers are so breathtakingly beautiful, that every trip to see one is built on dreams of images like this:
Where the reality is so often, much more like this!
But we didn’t care. We had seen an Oxfordshire Pallas’s Warbler and that is very, very special.
The author would like to thank his support group for their help in writing this article without using the phrase “seven-striped-sprite”. Thank you.
In a week of predominately westerly winds, it was pleasantly surprising to see new birds from the east arriving, as well as to catch up with some eastern species that arrived just before we did. There was also one rare wader from North America, a Semipalmated Sandpiper. In 2019 we had superb views of this species at Grutness:
This year another Semipalmated Sandpiper turned up across the bay at Pool of Virkie, favouring a small pool in the field next to Roger Riddington’s house. We decided not to try and get too close, but watched from a distance using our ‘scopes. It was in company with a juvenile Little Stint, at one point interacting with it and perching on the Stint’s back for a few seconds. In changing light, the distinguishing features from Little Stint varied from obvious to not very obvious and back again.
The Radde’s Warbler at Kergord got my vote for being one of the top three birds of the trip. It was typically difficult to see, but with a bit of patience we managed to piece together a view of the head and bill, then a flash of the pinkish-buff vent and tail as it disappeared before finally, we got a brief view of the whole bird for a moment and then it was back out of sight, creeping around in the base of a rosehip bush. As it was quite dark, we all choose to favour views of this bird, rather than photos, but Ewan Urquhart managed to get a nice picture of the bird as it perched out when he visited:
Photo by Ewan Urquhart
Also from the east was a Barred Warbler at Gulberwick, which perched up briefly before flying across the road:
A juvenile Common Rosefinch at Wester Quarff held particular interest for Andy. We visited this area on 9th October, a day that was forecast to be washed out by rain. We hoped to get an hour or so of birding in before the rain arrived, but even by 7:30am, when barely light, the rain began to fall. The Rosefinch was in a small (turnip?) crop by the road to Wester Quarff, so there was plenty of cover for it to shelter within. After over half an hour of standing in the rain searching through the Chaffinches, Brambling and Meadow Pipits that flitted around the crop, Dave and I were beginning to wonder at the point of this exercise. Especially when the best possible outcome was seeing a juvenile Common Rosefinch in the rain. But Andy has something of a Rosefinch obsession. We discussed how long we wanted to give this bird. I suggested another 20 minutes, to which Dave agreed, providing that included the 19 minute walk back to the car! However, Andy announced he wanted to give the Rosefinch another hour (!), so Dave and I agreed we would walk back and began scanning the bay for the eclipse drake King Eider, whilst Andy maintained his Rosefinch vigil. It all worked out in the end. I picked out the King Eider, Andy’s persistence paid off when the Rosefinch appeared and we all saw both birds:
The degree of Andy’s Rosefinch obsession can be demonstrated by the traditional bird-of-the-day discussion that the evening. We lost nearly the whole day to weather, so there were only two contenders: a drake King Eider and a juvenile Common Rosefinch. I would wager that 99% of birders would see this as a no-brainer. One is a dull brown juvenile finch, the other a magnificent brightly coloured sea duck, with a fabulous bill, just coming out of full breeding plumage. But not Mr Last. Dismissing the drake King Eider as “just another duck”, he then began to sing the virtues of the flank streaking, the wing-bars and even the evil beady eye, as positive virtues for the Rosefinch. Fortunately, democracy prevailed, with two-votes-to-one for the King Eider.
A Bluethroat in Burrafirth Quarry was one of the better marked autumn birds that we’ve seen, though it was very good at hiding in the dead thistle beds:
The juvenile Woodchat Shrike at Aith, worked its way up and down the fence line behind the houses. This bird had rather smart wing feathering. The pale-centered lower scapulars, with sharp chocolate brown edges contrasted with the dark-centered, pale-fringed greater coverts. The white patch at the base of the primaries was obvious and the primaries tips had pale fringes too:
A Rustic Bunting, found near Kegord, which also hosted the Radde’s Warbler, attracted a few birders:
Shortly after we arrived the Rustic Bunting flew along the hedgerow calling with a distinctive short, compressed, high-pitched “zit” call and perched up on the other side of the hedge. We knew this from the cascade of camera shutter noise we could hear. Seeing the photographers advance towards the hedge, we decided to wait on our side of the hedge to see if the bunting would appear there. The bird dropped down to feed out of sight, in a long ditch that separated the two fields. We waited. And waited. After 20 minutes a single “zit” call rang out from a bush 10 meters down the fence line from where the bird was last seen. I looked across at Andy and knew that he had heard the call too. We both move down the fence line and focus our attention on this bush. Suddenly Andy calls out “there it is!” and there, perched low down in the bush in front of us, is a rather fabulous Rustic Bunting:
Photo by Andy
Another nice bird from the east was this ghostly Siberian Chiffchaff which appeared in front of us in the small quarry at Quendale on a very wet late afternoon. We met Dan Brown and James Eaton working the iris beds here, Dan was using a thermal imager to try to pick out heat signatures from birds moving within cover, a glimpse of the future in migrant hunting perhaps?
That evening Dave and I went to a meeting of the Shetland Bird Club to hear a talk on Hummingbirds by local Shetland birder Jon Dunn. Jon began his talk by illustrating why he is so drawn to Hummingbirds by contrasting them with “dull migrant species” like Siberian Chiffchaff, the very species we had found at Quendale that evening. I like to think they have a subtle, delicate beauty of their own Jon!
Finally, our visit to Shetland ended with another lesson in remaining calm and reviewing evidence. News broke of a possible Eastern Yellow Wagtail at Gulberwick on our final afternoon. The bird was feeding in a sheep field:
The bird was a grey juvenile Yellow Wagtail, but as Dave asked whilst we watched it, was there anything about it that made it an Eastern Yellow Wagtail? It did not call whilst we were there, so there was no definitive evidence. We noted the slight yellow wash to the vent and at certain times the mantle had a very slight brownish hue to it. It was certainly not a classic monochrome individual. The following day a recording of this bird’s call was made, which confirmed that it was a Western Yellow Wagtail. Once again, the temptation to go for the rare option, that on Shetland in October is magnified by the location and the date, needed to be resisted. Keep calm and carry on!
